The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for exercise users easily to help reaching their common goal of completing “10,000 steps a day”, i.e., 10K steps, so that exercise becomes part of a daily routine and fitness is achieved through regular exercise.
The successful maintenance of an exercise program is often hindered by uncertainty in the amount of exercise being completed during the day. This is especially true when the goal of the program is to burn a certain number of calories per day or to cover a certain distance by walking each day. Exercise carried out outside of the formalized program may vary from day to day and is essentially an unknown factor. Therefore, the amount of walking on the treadmill necessary to attain a certain goal each day depends on the number of steps completed during the rest of the day outside of the formalized exercise on the treadmill.
The 10K steps per day program, while an effective method of ensuring satisfactory performance of a daily routine, often leads to uncertainty as to the amount of exercise already performed outside of the treadmill use or involves a restriction on the type of exercise being performed. That is, jogging, walking and other exercises performed aside from the treadmill, constitute an unknown factor as far as its contribution to the overall 10K steps per day program or requires careful calculations and estimates in order to determine how much of the 10K steps per day were performed before exercising on to the treadmill.
The method and apparatus of the present invention advantageously combine a treadmill and a pedometer, by calibrating the strike-length electronically and storing that calibrated strike-length inside the treadmill for later use, (strike-length data for pedometer input use also), thereafter completing the 10,000 (10K) steps each day as an increasingly routine, simple task.
The present invention achieves these objects by using a pedometer to accumulate the total number of steps whenever the exercise user is walking (or even while shopping), jogging during a day; he/she can transfer the total steps accumulated during the day to a treadmill. The treadmill, with the stored strike-length, is programmed to calculate the difference between the steps already made and the 10,000 (10K) steps.
A final “distance/time” workout program is then presented, displaying the “count-down” as to the remaining number of steps. Also, running at a pre-set user comfortable speed, the user is prompted to finish the necessary workout (steps), i.e. accomplishing 10,000 (10K) steps a day exercise with ease.
The present invention is implementable in a software program/module with the addition of a “10K-Steps” or the like push button added to a treadmill console.